


Deeper Than My Feet Could Ever Wander

by Elleth



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Backstory, Dreams and Nightmares, Dreamsharing, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Finnish Mythology & Folklore, Hurt While Saving Other Character, Hurt/Comfort, Kissing, M/M, Memories, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:00:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24199375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elleth/pseuds/Elleth
Summary: Reynir finds Onni, but he won't wake, and entering into his dream, finds himself confronted with the evil still haunting the Hotakainens.
Relationships: Reynir Árnason/Onni Hotakainen
Comments: 2
Kudos: 16
Collections: Hurt Comfort Exchange 2020





	Deeper Than My Feet Could Ever Wander

**Author's Note:**

  * For [IdleLeaves](https://archiveofourown.org/users/IdleLeaves/gifts).



"Onni? _Onni!_ " 

Reynir shook Onni's shoulder, and almost let go again feeling how loose and cold his body was even through his clothes, almost like he was already dead - but Onni's eyes rolled under his lids, and his lips opened a fraction. No sound came out, but the lines of pain around his mouth deepened. If it was even possible for his face to become any paler, that was just happening - his hair almost seemed dark in comparison - and the crusts of blood around his nostrils did nothing to make Reynir any calmer. 

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" As gently as he could, Reynir gathered Onni into his arms. "Don't die, okay? Don't die, I'm taking you to the rest of the team, Mikkel will know what to do. Or Lalli. Or… someone! _Please_..."

Because Onni couldn't die. They had come all the way out here, and Reynir had no idea what had happened to Onni, just that… it wasn't good. It wasn't good at all. 

Onni hung in his arms like a ragdoll. A damned heavy ragdoll, once Reynir tried to stagger to his feet. 

He'd carried sheep before at home on the farm, and he didn't think Onni weighed more than a sheep, but the sheep usually weren't an almost-dead weight in his arms, and even though sheep could scream in a way that almost sounded human, he'd never heard a sheep make the noise that Onni made when Reynir tried to take a few steps out of the door of the abandoned building his _fylgja_ had led him to: Bone-deep sounds of pain. 

And he still wasn't waking. Outside, it was getting dark. 

"Oh gods, oh, I… okay, I'm not moving you any more." Carefully, he lowered Onni back onto the ground, and tugged his fur cloak into place so that he'd at least have some protection against the cold floor. 

"You know what, I'll find another way. If you stay here, I'll run back. It's a day or so, and I'm not sure they're still in the same spot, so maybe I won't find them, since they're still looking for you, too, and now they're probably looking for me as well, but when my dog told me to come or else you'd probably die, I couldn't just wait for them. I just ran off while they were sleeping, because I'm an idiot, I'm so sorry… I just wanted to help you..." 

He looked around for something else to tuck Onni in. There wasn't a bedroll or a pack or anything - Reynir had no idea where Onni had left all that or if he'd had anything with him at all, but a broken bow lay by the shattered glass door Reynir had entered through, shards flung outward, and the arrows had spilled from their quiver where Onni had fallen. Nothing there except overturned furniture and a bunch of nondescript, discoloured rags that'd been flung to one corner of the room. 

It must have been a living room once, opening into an overgrown garden, from the furniture that had been flung aside and overturned: A sofa with rotted upholstery, a wooden table with broken legs, a fallen bookshelf, a shattered screen that might have been one of the old-world televisions. Shattered plant pots. Really, it looked like a bomb had gone off in there, with Onni square in the center of it - the _source_ of it? 

Reynir took a step back as if Onni might go off again any moment. 

"Did… did you do that?" Reynir said, and sat down heavily on the wooden floor. Onni, predictably, gave no answer, and Reynir put his head in his hands. This seemed like nothing so much as the stories Emil had told of how he'd had to drag Lalli through Denmark to the rendezvous spot because Lalli had blown up a giant with magic somehow. 

Maybe he could drag Onni back to the others? But he decided that the situation was different - if they were tracking him down, it'd be better to stay in place than trying to make his own way back. The village he'd come through hadn't been short on houses that looked like they might still house trolls, and he didn't want to risk being caught outside while night was falling. Now that he'd seen what'd happen when you got bitten and infected, he couldn't risk that for either him or Onni.

"Okay. I guess we're staying here," he said to the room. Onni still gave no reply, didn't seem to move, didn't seem to wake, not even when Reynir took out the tin of black colour and large brush from his pack, began drawing a sheltering rune around them both, and for good measure he wound up pricking his finger to squeeze a couple of drops of blood into the center drawing, and murmured one of the invocations he had learned at Mage School. 

The black lines briefly flared up in bright blue, and Reynir briefly smiled when he realized his message had been heard, and the gods were going to keep an eye on him and Onni tonight. 

* * *

Reynir went to sleep curled around Onni with his blanket wrapped around them both. Onni remained cold as a stone, and with all his nervousness still stuttering through him, it took Reynir a good while for his eyes to close; he could watch the full moon wander across the sky so bright that it was nearly starless. 

The same moon hung over the dreamscape when Reynir finally found himself there, although the stars were out in force above the dark water. A flicker of blue and green lashed across the sky like a mark to show him the way to… somewhere. Onni, hopefully. 

He briefly thought about finding Lalli, but the matter seemed too urgent to wander off elsewhere. The gods obviously wanted him to take care of Onni alone - or if they meant for him to find Lalli, he would probably find Lalli. 

Reynir had never been so grateful for his footsteps. They carried him swiftly and safely across the glassy surface of the water, and none of the creatures he could see squirming below in the depths, and which he tried very hard not to look at - deer skulls and twisted antlers, hands waving like seaweed, twisted spirits that looked like products of his nightmares rather than real beings, the shadow of an infected whale - made any move to attack him. It wasn't the first time that made him wonder whether he was actually invisible to them. 

The thought soon slipped his mind when mist began rising from the water, and first stalks of reed poked past the surface. Reynir had been there before, and remembering his dog's fear the last time, his stomach dropped, but he plunged onward until he reached the shore.

It wasn't Onni's dreamspace, Reynir was certain of that the moment his foot touched the ground. There was nothing of Onni in the feeling it gave him, none of Onni's reluctance and grief and the resolve and discipline running tightly controlled through all that, keeping Onni together and upright. 

Funny, that he would think of that now, in the absence of it all. 

The further Reynir made his way forward through the reed forest in the mist, the surer he became that he was wrong after all - this _was_ Onni's Haven, or at least it had been once. He knew the pond, the water lilies, the rock ledge where Onni liked to perch, remembered even the tree that he had found Onni in in his owl shape. 

But the entire place was vacant. Not simply as if Onni were awake, and rather as if it were a shell of its former self, abandoned. As if Onni had ceased to exist. 

Reynir sat down heavily on a boulder. The thing vanished into a cloud of mist beneath him, and he landed on his butt ungently - instead, trying to think and get his bearings, he crawled to his feet and leaned against a tree. 

That, too, vanished as soon as he touched it, and it was only thanks to his reflexes that he didn't fall over backward, again sitting down heavily. At least the ground didn't disappear underneath him. From where Reynir sat, he could see the mist creeping in from the shores of the dream sea the way he'd come, reaching out tendrils, and wondered if that had anything to do with… everything Reynir was just experiencing. As if the place was remembering that it wasn't a place anymore when it was put to the test.

He stepped carefully now, tiptoeing between tree roots and boulders, trying to intentionally not touch anything so he didn't manage to completely vanish the nature around Onni's dreamspace before he had a chance to find out what was going on. 

The pond was the same. The water lilies were the same. Onni was nowhere in sight. 

Would they still be there if - if Onni had _died_? 

He'd still been alive before Reynir had fallen asleep. Sleeping as close to Onni as he had, he'd been able to feel every heartbeat through Onni's clothes from the emaciated frame next to him, and every slow, shallow breath. But they'd been regular, steady. Reynir thought so, at least. 

What if he'd died while Reynir was asleep? He didn't even know what was going on, wasn't that as much of a possibility as anything else? 

Only one way to find out. Reynir made himself wake. 

* * * 

He woke to darkness. The moon had vanished around the side of the house, and it probably was sinking, because when Reynir looked up at the starry sky, it was much more vibrant than before, even though the sky was lightening at the edges. He exhaled deeply, felt his face and hair and patted down his clothes. 

Still there. Still himself. 

Against his cheek, Onni's chest heaved, lingered, sank. A slow double-boom of heartbeat followed in the space between that breath and the next. 

"You're… you're still alive. I hope. Gods, I hope I manage to find you. I'm scared, Onni. I don't know what to do." 

The darkness lingered on, unimpressed by his confession. Onni gave no reaction. 

Reynir burrowed his face into his blankets when the tears came. 

* * * 

He still lay awake when light crept around the corner of the house and briefly wished for the blackout curtains that he had in his room in Iceland - the short nights of summer, if they existed at all, never gave him a chance to sleep, otherwise. Not that he did a lot of that in summer. Sleeping was for the winter. 

But Onni still hadn't woken, and he still didn't know what to do. The team would have sheltered somewhere along the way to find him during the dark hours, if they came after him at all. He hadn't doubted that the day before, but now? 

Reynir remembered the church, and Sigrun and Mikkel's outrage at him running off. It'd been a good thing then, because he'd found the solution to their ghost problems, but this time they weren't being followed by anything - they were the ones doing the following - and he still hadn't figured out how to help Onni. 

He simply didn't seem to wake, and now that light was spilling in a bright rectangle over where Onni lay, he looked even worse than he had in the warm-tinted sunset light the evening before. The cool blue morning sky made him look even more dead, and it made Reynir even more afraid that what he had found was only a shell, that Onni wasn't even in there anymore. 

Even his Haven had been different than Lalli's when he had been cast out and taken refuge with Emil - of course he hadn't known it then, but then, checking for Lalli every night, and finding his dreamspace empty... Reynir had thought of it like a house that lacked an occupant. Onni's… well. It was in the process of disintegrating. Disappearing. 

And this was… well. This was _Onni_ , who had heard him plead for help from a distance not once but twice, and who'd come and nearly given up his life defeating the onslaught of trolls the night Tuuri was bitten. 

Tuuri… was she the key? Reynir couldn't help but wonder. Onni had been so heartsick over losing his sister and so angry at Reynir for keeping the news of the bite from him, and then he'd simply… gone. They still hadn't figured out why, and nothing in the room gave him the answer, either. Maybe he'd simply lost the will to live if he hadn't managed to do what he set out to and given up after a failed attempt of doing… whatever, really. 

"I don't understand," Reynir said, drawing his knees up to rest his forehead on them, and wrapping his arms around his legs. "I don't get it. How can I wake you up? What's wrong?" 

Onni gave him no answer, and the world around him was silent. 

* * *

All by himself, Reynir spent part of the day digging a fire pit in the garden, and trying to make a fire in it. When that didn't work, he resorted to magic to kindle a few flickers that he carefully blew on to bring them to life. Soon enough, he had a roaring fire, and thanked Mikkel for saying that if Reynir insisted on helping with the cooking, he better carry some of the equipment and ingredients, too. 

After some consideration, he made porridge, which turned out terrible, flavourless and watery. Mikkel was the one who carried the precious jar of honey, the milk powder and the dried fruits. After rooting around the wilderness that had once been a garden, though, careful not to startle any vermin beasts that might be there and poking each clump of grass and underbrush with a stick before rooting through them, Reynir found a patch of wild strawberries in a corner under a tree. He hoped they'd make the slop he'd produced at least a little more edible. They didn't really. 

He spooned the food into his mouth listlessly, swallowed it in gulps trying not to taste it, and eventually set aside some of the wateriest part of the gruel to try and feed Onni, if he could. 

Onni's lips were open, but try as Reynir might, he couldn't manage to spoon it in right. A few drops might have trickled in, because Onni's brow furrowed ever so slightly, and Reynir hastily apologized. "I know it's terrible, I didn't like it either. I'm sorry, I just… wanted to help." 

That was always it, wasn't it? Wanting to help, and then making everything worse, he thought, when he carefully cleaned the slop out of the scraggly beard that had started growing around Onni's mouth. It wasn't even really a beard, you couldn't call it that. Stubble that'd gone a little long. 

He smiled and shook his head, and only noticed that his hand was lingering on Onni's cheek when more of the ruined porridge ran from between Onni's lips and onto Reynir's fingers. Reynir sighed, shook his head again, and dabbed it away. If Onni was spitting it out even while he was unconscious, Reynir probably was the worst cook in the known world. 

"You don't like it either, do you? I'm sorry, I'm a terrible cook, at least if I don't have all the things I'm used to. If you come visit me in Iceland again, I'll make us something nice. Maybe I'll make you a cake. Or… my mom can make us one, she's an awesome baker."

At some point along the way, while Reynir talked about his life in Iceland and his favourite sheep, and things Onni probably would have hated and found dreadfully boring, Reynir noticed that Onni was shivering. The sun had wandered away, taking its warmth with it. No surprise that Onni was cold - or… was he whimpering? 

At least he was making some sort of noise, too low in his throat to make out clearly - but Reynir could tell it wasn't happy sounds, not in the slightest. His heart clenched painfully in his chest. He'd not… he'd not heard that sort of noise, ever before. Not from Onni, or anyone else.

He never wanted to hear it again. 

"Onni? If you can hear me, wake up! Please! Come on, if you can hear me, you can just follow my voice back, I don't know… I don't know what I should do! Please help me!" 

He cradled Onni's head in his lap, and bent down to try and soothe him. Somehow, between frantically smoothing the frazzled hair of Onni's terrible hairdo out of his face, Reynir bent down and pressed his lips to Onni's forehead, the way his sisters or Bjarni had done when he was little and upset over something. 

Onni quieted. 

"Did… did I do that?" 

No answer. 

It was so still that the only sound in the room, finally, was Reynir gasping for breath. He wished desperately that the rest of the team would finally arrive and find him and know what to do, but it was taking them a lot longer than he'd expected, and that in itself wasn't good - but he needed to focus on the problem at hand, finding Onni and solving whatever was making him make those noises. It couldn't be anything good. 

* * *

His dog led the way this time. Reynir wasn't completely sure that it was a different direction from the last time he'd set out - the stars in the dreamworld did not move, but the water stretching endless into the dark looked the same no matter where he went. 

When an island swam out of the swaths of mist ahead of Reynir, his dog stopped. "I can't go further," it said to him. "I'm not allowed to go there." It nudged Reynir's hand with its nose as if it wanted to wish him luck, turned and bounded away across the water, while Reynir sighed and walked on until the features of the island became clearer to him. 

He'd been there before - more than once, in fact. 

Or rather, he'd been there once in dreams, and once in waking, and he wasn't sure when-where he was now. There was none of the forest of burnt tree stumps and new growth all around, but the air wasn't buzzing with life and voices as it had done in Lalli's dream-memory. 

This island and its village were abandoned, and a cloying smell that clung to the back of Reynir's throat made his eyes water and his stomach seize up hung in the still air.

Reynir knew that smell. It was rare that one of the immune white foxes on Iceland ever managed to badly hurt a sheep, but they did manage to catch and eat newborn lambs sometimes. And accidents, even with adult sheep, could always happen. Finding their remains smelled almost the same. 

Someone had died there - many someones. 

Lalli's explanation had left no doubt that that had happened to the village. He, Tuuri and Onni had been the only ones who had escaped. The rest of the people had either been taken into the rescue ships to die, or not survived that long to begin with. 

Then why was Onni _here_ of all places?

Was he there at all? 

In spite of the miasma, Reynir decided that he should have a look around. He couldn't remember the way to Onni's old house, just that they had a ship in their yard, so he went looking for that instead of combing through all the different houses and probably coming across more corpses than he ever wanted to see. 

Before him on the village street, he spotted a dark stain - blood, old and dried. He remembered the mention of screaming and gunshots when Lalli gave them the rundown of what had happened after the Hotakainens had fled, and the smell of smoke - they must have burned some bodies when they had still had the strength for it. What made Reynir afraid more than that was that even if almost no one in the village was immune, that still left a few people. Where were _they_? 

Reynir wished his dog hadn't left him. The silence in the streets and the blank window-eyes of the houses were oppressive and scary; every moving shadow in between the trees seemed to hide a troll or beast. 

Reynir wondered if he could get infected in dreams, and hoped that he wouldn't be. That was something they hadn't taught him at mage school, but if it was possible, Onni would probably be infected too, and that made his whole attempt at finding him - or staying with him in the waking world - pointless, even dangerous.

Reynir continued his way through the village, peeking down side roads that he hoped would lead to Onni's old house. One of them led uphill, and then dropped steeply on the other side - and Reynir reeled back just in time when a blinding swarm of black and green flies lifted into the air with a deafening buzz, stumbled over his feet, and sat down in the dirt, retching miserably as the stink of decaying bodies intensified. 

In between the cloud of flies - the source of the smell, so strong his eyes watered. Or maybe that was the shock. Laid out in rows on fresh earth, bodies upon bodies, some wrapped in sheets, and some torn away to reveal the grisly corpse beneath - some covered in pustules and rashed skin, dead eyes staring sightless at the sky. Others whose faces were a ruin as if from a merciful gunshot that killed them quickly. Some sheets blood-stained where the dead bodies' hearts would be. Everywhere around them, piles and piles of wood. 

Some, untouched, in clean sheets. Perhaps they'd had a kinder death. One woman, at the far end of the grave, lay on her side next to a canister of gasoline, still clutching a shovel that she would probably have used to throw earth on the dead and give them a dignified rest once they'd been burned. She seemed healthy otherwise, apart from the fact that she was dead. Probably the last survivor, an immune who hadn't been able to stomach the knowledge that no one else was left? 

Or - he looked more closely. 

Her face was pulled into a petrified grimace of terror. Was there - Reynir whirled around. 

Nothing. A tree shadow moving with a cloud passing the sun. 

Reynir turned back to the pit of corpses, and the dead woman, and reluctantly stepped closer, holding his breath against the stench and the flies that had settled while he still stood gaping, and now rose up again in thick, buzzing curtains.

When he reached her and gave her a cursory examination, trying to keep his hands steady. 

They shook anyway, and he tried his best to keep down the urge to retch - or cry, or just run. 

"You have to," he told himself. "Maybe you'll figure out where Onni is from here." 

It was what made him keep at it, fumbling and hesitant. There was no mark on the woman. No gunshot, no knife wound, no sign of the Rash. A belt around her waist held a kantele, similar to the one Reynir had seen Onni with, and several other implements that might be magic, but other than that she was simply - gone. He felt his eyes prick with tears at the new horror, and remembered what Lalli had told them - a Kade could harbour - though that seemed like the wrong word - many souls of infected mages. Maybe that had killed her, and taken her? The same one that had taken the woman Hilja and Onni's grandmother?

Was there a Kade in this dream, or was it simply a memory? 

He decided not to stay to find out. He didn't know if It could absorb an Icelandic mage, but he didn't want to stick around to force an answer. And even if it couldn't, a meeting would be bad news for anyone, that much was clear. 

Another rustle. 

Reynir startled, casting around wildly.

A washed-out, tattered cloak swept along the edge of his vision, and out of sight. Gone, like a breath of wind.

Almost at the same time, in another direction, he heard the quick patter of footsteps through dry grass, heather and blueberry bushes, and caught a glimpse of the retreating figure of someone - not the Kade, he was sure - through the trees, though the thicket of pine stems disorientated his eyes and blurred the contours of the running person. 

Nonetheless, he was familiar in movements, the shock of silvery hair, the stocky built. 

"ONNI!" 

Reynir gave chase, downhill and shoreward until his lungs burned and he wondered how Onni could run as long and as fast as he was doing. When Reynir reached a door in the palisade, Onni was gone - but far above the water of dream-Saimaa, the retreating speck of a bright eagle-owl, wings flashing noiselessly in the sunlight. 

At least Reynir knew the direction Onni had gone now. He found a boat not far off, dragged carelessly to shore on a little private landing spot, but someone had taken an axe to its bottom and the oars - someone on the island with enough integrity to try and keep the infection from spreading through anyone fleeing when they had declared Code 0. 

Magic and his wadded-up cloak helped Reynir patch the damage, and a strip torn hastily from the bottom of his robes, with a couple of sticks, to try and hold the oars together for a provisional rune to keep everything whole-ish long enough to go after Onni. Farm magic was good for something after all! 

Reynir felt jubilant for a second, until the washed-out cloak swept along the edge of his vision again. 

He jumped to his feet, the oar falling from numb fingers and splintering into its parts again. It felt like something was playing with him, and the thought made his blood run cold. The only one - the only _thing_ that would still be alive on Toivosaari to do that - was the Kade. But this was a dream, a memory. Or was it really there? He remembered now, suddenly, the pile of rags in the room he'd found Onni in. They had the same washed-out, nondescript colour, like the creature that cloaked itself in them had leached out all their vibrancy, or the years had faded it into nothingness. 

Onni had faced the Kade, and now it was here, in Onni's dream. Or was it? 

Onni could probably explain. Reynir bent to pick up the oar he'd dropped, and fixed it back up. His heart was pounding, but at least if he found Onni he'd get answers. He pushed off the shore and away from the island, hoping that he was also leaving the creature behind. 

Rowing took longer than he'd thought, but he had an idea where Onni had gone, from Lalli's dream-memory if not the rough direction Onni's flight had given him. It made him wish that he could just blink the way Lalli had done, and transport himself in time or space to where Onni was, but this wasn't his dream. He tried, and nothing happened, but eventually he reached the shore of the sanctuary island, and there he found Onni, huddled alone by a fire in a hollow of rocks, feathers shed around him. 

Reynir stepped closer gingerly. "Onni… do you..." 

Onni's hands were at his throat, and Reynir found himself slammed against the nearest rock wall, while glowing eyes peered up at him, narrowed to slits, avoiding direct eye contact. 

Onni looked… younger. Sadder, but less resigned. The shock and grief of losing Toivosaari had not settled into his bones the way it had with the Onni Reynir knew, like it was still in the process of sinking in. And still, there was an undercurrent of him there that Reynir knew and… well, loved. This was adult Onni's dream, after all, even though this Onni was the teenager who had lost everything just now. 

And he didn't seem to recognize Reynir, not telling him to speak, or explain himself, or scold him, and rather, by the sting of electricity against his throat Reynir thought, trying to summon enough magic to… well, fry him. 

It didn't work. Something had weakened Onni, or maybe he'd just expended too much energy flying to his shelter. He sagged, and released his grip on Reynir, then stepped away. "You are not It," he said, defeated, and it was weird to hear him sound so much younger. 

Reynir cleared his throat, massaged where Onni's hands had choked him. 

"I'm Reynir! You don't remember me, I guess?" 

"That's an Icelandic name. I don't know anyone from Iceland." 

"You do! You know me! I'm Reyn- I'm that annoying guy who keeps barging into your space and following you everywhere, even though you've told me not to do that! I've even followed you out into Finland, whatever you were doing out here! You just ran off! I don't… I found you, in the waking world, but you're unconscious, and you won't wake up, and I'm… Onni, I'm scared. I'm alone and I don't know what to do, and I don't want you to die! Please wake up, that's all I'm asking!" 

Onni, the young Onni, was watching him with a blank face, but he was listening, even though the words didn't seem to spark any recognition. There was one more thing he could try. 

"I know it's about Tuuri. I know her dying made you… I guess you probably went to kill yourself, but now that we found you, do you really still want to go through with that? Just… please. Tuuri died. You don't have to!" 

There were tears standing in young Onni's eyes now, and he was gulping down heavy mouthfuls of air to keep from crying, but the first of the tears spilled over and ran down his cheek, and he huddled in on himself. 

Reynir pressed on, kneeling in the shed feathers on the ground, his hands on Onni's shoulders. "You already fought the Kade, and it looks like you won! You're done, we can go home now!"

Onni's features shimmered, shivered, changed. Almost imperceptibly, Onni was himself again - no longer the scared, heartbroken teenager that he'd been on Toivosaari. 

This was the Onni Reynir knew. 

No less scared. No less hurt. And no less heartbroken.

"I… I can't leave here. I fought her, I won, I ambushed her before she could get me, but she… Grandma, she… the Kade… banished me here. She's here, too. She still has a spiritual presence that I need to defeat before I can lead her - them - It - to rest. You need to _go_ before she gets you, too! But I… I do remember you…"

Impossible warmth swelled in Reynir's chest. 

He reached for Reynir, suddenly desperate, and pulled him in, and Reynir let him until their lips met, and Onni's grip tightened on Reynir's shoulders, one hand going to the base of his head, and holding him in place until Reynir was lightheaded with a giddy joy and the lack of air, and refused to break away even after the kiss was done. 

Until Onni gave him a shove that sent Reynir stumbling back, strong with the power of desperation. 

"Just go! Get out of here! I'll come as soon as I can, if I can. This is my dream, but it's of her making, she'll know you came in, it's a miracle she didn't get you yet, I - " 

Onni stilled, blinked his eyes resolutely, and wiped his hands across his face. When he took them down, it was as if he had magicked away the rising panic and left competence and calm in its wake, only the way his eyes shimmered and darted uncertainly still indicated that he was fighting to keep it down. "Reynir. How much do you know about _Kateet_? 

"Not much, I guess?" Reynir admitted. "Sorry. I learned some Icelandic magic at the academy, but I'm still useless with Finnish magic. I only know what I got from Lalli and you and Tuuri, and the guy taking care of your village and the sentinel gull mage at the outpost." 

Onni grunted, took a breath, and began his explanation. "A Kade is a type of troll that infects others either physically or spiritually, through eye contact. It especially targets mages. It will… absorb their spirits and powers if it can, even if you are immune. We believe that that is what it did to my grandma after infecting the village. It came inside in a mage called -" 

" - Hilja. Yeah, I remember her. I saw what happened in a dream Lalli had. He showed us everything. Your grandma looked into its eyes, and she only held on long enough to send Lalli away and tell you about the Code 0, and you were the only ones who survived." 

Having his own story narrated to him clearly took Onni aback, and left him eyeing Reynir carefully, as if he doubted that Reynir was himself. And with good reason, Reynir thought to himself, but he smiled instead, as guileless as he could. 

Onni only looked more suspicious. "You know Its origin. That is good. Remember that."

"Okay? So…" Reynir started hesitantly, remembering the noises Onni had made in his sleep. "What… what happened to you? Here, I mean? I know she hurt you. You were crying out in your sleep."

Onni was silent for long enough that Reynir could map out the pattern of wind in the pine tree above them. 

"Nothing," he said finally, his lips set into a thin line that spelled out the finality of the declaration.

"I don't believe you," Reynir said, heart in his throat. 

"Reynir…" Onni sounded, now, like he was addressing a petulant child. 

"You say I have to leave. I'm not leaving without knowing how to take you home. Maybe talking about what happened will tip us off so we can both go." 

"I tried to fight her here. I… did a stupid thing, back when my village was infected. I made sure Lalli and Tuuri wouldn't wake up while I was gone, and I went over there when it'd been silent for a few days. That's what you saw - when I ran away from you. There are probably people still alive in there now, hiding, but It… is still there, too. Its work isn't done. I tried to fight it, but it had me trapped in who I was back then, so I wasn't powerful enough to stop it. I fought it. It hurt me." 

Onni exhaled a shuddering breath. "And it'll hurt you, too, if it can get its hands on you. Or its eyes." 

"But _why_? I never did anything to… It!" Reynir exclaimed. If he hadn't been afraid before, he was now; the painful thumping of his heart felt like a stone pounding inside his chest.

Onni gave him a look from darkened eyes. "Neither did any of us. It doesn't need a reason. No troll does. It's bent on getting me and Lalli and Tuu- _us two_. Because we survived. And now you, because you had to be an idiot and follow me when I told you to stay away!" 

"You don't get it, right?" Reynir grabbed Onni by his shoulders and shook him. "I CAN'T STAY AWAY! I LOVE YOU!" 

Onni was silent. He didn't look stunned, or angry, or anything. His gaze was fixed on a spot across Reynir's shoulder, and the colour drained from his cheeks. His hand, his large, warm palm with callouses at the base of his fingers, clapped over Reynir's lips. "Quiet!" he hissed. "It's here. It's seen the wards I set on the shore." 

Reynir willed himself to be still. He was so close to Onni, kneeling on the floor between his spread legs, and Onni's touch sizzled like magic across his skin. Any other time, and it would have been so close to perfect that he tried to breathe down the intrusive thoughts that their closeness conjured up.

This was the worst time for _that_ , and it took forever since Onni's hold relaxed, his hand slipped away. "It's gone. For now." 

Maybe the passing of the danger made him stupid, but the first words that came to his mind had nothing to do with the Kade almost finding them. "Why did you kiss me?" Reynir blurted out. 

Onni gave him a look that would have frozen anyone else in their tracks. He didn't reply to that question, pressing on where they had left off before Reynir's declaration. 

"A Kade can and will curse you, with anything from bad luck to… much worse, if they are a powerful mage, and my grandma _was_ powerful. If she is in there, It has all her magic, and much more from the others that it absorbed. It can kill with a look. That I beat It alone was… luck, that was all. I didn't think I'd make it out alive."

"That's why you sent Lalli off with Emil, and told Mikkel to keep him from following you?" 

"Yes." Onni's face closed. "He doesn't need me any longer. _Tuuri_ doesn't need me any longer. There is nothing for me in Keuruu, or anywhere but Tuonela." 

"What…" his fingers were shaking so hard Reynir had trouble concentrating, but he bridged the distance between them, reaching out. "... what about me?" he said softly.

Onni pulled his hand away. 

"No." 

Hot tears pricked Reynir's eyes before Onni had fully spoken that word. "Then what was - " He reached out again, and this time he gripped Onni's hand against his straining, and pulled him in. 

" - what was _that_?" Their faces were almost touching, and it was desperation again that drove him forward to press his lips to Onni's in another kiss, and Onni again responded before catching himself, greed and need both apparent in the way that he claimed Reynir's mouth and pressed up against him, one knee between Reynir's thighs. 

They came apart gasping, Reynir trying to breathe down the hardness that Onni had to be aware of, hadn't he? If he didn't - Reynir dared a glance. It seemed Onni had the same problem, and that in turn did nothing to forestall the rush of heat straight to his groin. Onni was right. He really was stupid. 

And - once again, Onni turned away, defeat written plain as day into his features. "We can't. _I_ can't. Either I'll lose you, or you'll lose me. I _can't_. Knowing Grandma, I'll lose you. She'll want to torment me before she absorbs my soul. Suffering and trials are what makes a luonto stronger, and she'll want me to be as strong as she can be so she gets more powerful. I think that's why she sent me here, to relive everything and gain more power before she gets me for good. It's only a matter of time before she gets past the wards. It shouldn't be hard for her, she was my first teacher, she knows how I work my magic." 

"I didn't notice any wards," Reynir said.

"You never do," Onni replied. "Not the first time you came into my Haven, and not now. But they're there, any Finnish mage will be held off by them for a while. If you go now, you still have a chance." 

Reynir shook his head and laid his head on Onni's knee; Onni's hand came to rest on his head, absently digging his fingers into Reynir's hair. "I don't know how, and I'm not going anywhere - you can't make me!" The response made Onni frown, but he left his hand where it was. "I don't want you to be stuck here to be tortured, and I don't want you to have to watch me getting tortured. - And I don't really want to get tortured either," he added, almost as an afterthought.

He really didn't. "So I'm not leaving. If I can't get you out any other way, I'm going to fight her." 

Onni made a despairing noise low in his throat, and let his hand sink to his side. 

"Don't look her in the eyes under any circumstance. Goodbye, Reynir. I won't watch you die. I can't." 

"What?"

Onni rose to his feet and walked away deeper into the copse of trees climbing up the hillock that was the sanctuary island. The earth rumbled behind him, and like once before, trees grew from sapling to towering pine in the gaps, closing the path behind him. 

Reynir's hands balled into fists against the pang of loss. "I'm not giving up that easily! You'll see when I take you home!" 

The trees didn't answer.

* * *

If there were wards in place around the island, Reynir didn't want to jeopardize them, and Onni in turn. He was confused, and something deep within him hurt like a wound, something that hadn't been there before he'd confronted Onni, and Onni had walked away, and as he rowed back to Toivosaari, he nearly ran into a rock just below the surface of the water. 

He didn't have the least idea how to track down the Kade, so what he did was to prepare as well as he could. He cleared a large space of debris, rolling aside rocks and pushing fallen branches to the sides, and then set about scuffing runes into the ground. A Kade probably wasn't anything like a sheep, but he still adapted the one that kept a flock in place to have a stronger hold. If a Kade had many souls, maybe this was the thing that would work best. 

Finally, after setting up a sheltering circle for himself, Reynir scribbled a lighting rune for the long nights of Icelandic winter onto the ground, but the staves that spelled out light he doubled, and then after brief consideration, started over, tripling them instead. If the Kade worked through eyesight, blinding it in some way might be a good idea. 

While he worked, dusk came and settled like a blanket. Then all that remained was to tie the sash of his robe over his eyes - the fabric was thin enough to let him see through it, but probably would block the Kade from making direct eye contact with him. 

He hoped. 

Then he sat down and started singing at the top of his voice. 

He'd never felt so alone and out of place.

* * *

The Kade came with the night birds hushing. Reynir sat inside his sheltering rune, and his thoughts were on Onni. "Hey," he said. "I'm here." 

The Kade halted, and if this thing, with its mishappen face that looked like many features had congealed and blurred into one in the shadow of its hood, swimming underneath something that might be skin, could display any emotion, Reynir thought it seemed perplexed, the bright-shining pinpoints of its eyes flickering red in confusion.

A strange thrill ran through him. He had looked the Kade into its face and was still alive. He didn't know if anyone else had ever done that. 

"wHaT _aRE_ yOu?" the Kade said, a horrible choir of distorted voices. Reynir couldn't help but wonder how many mages it had eaten. 

"I'm someone who'll fight you," he said simply. "Because I know what you are. You are a Kade, and Onni's grandma, and Hilja, and so many other people who deserve to be free!" 

A flicker of uncertainty rippled over the features. The cloth shuddered. Reynir rose to his feet. 

"sILLy LiTtLe SPirIT." Then It threw its head back and laughed. 

Reynir lunged himself at it, and his hands grasped at the cloth, grasped at the body, the wind made solid, under his hands, and he gave it a shove that sent the Kade stumbling into the holding rune. He fell onto the rocky ground and chafed his hands bloody, scratching his chin open on the rock-hard soil. 

His makeshift blindfold slipped. The knot unravelled. The sash fluttered to the ground.

The Kade stood wordlessly in its prison. It was no longer laughing. 

The red malice of its gaze bore down on Reynir, and he reached behind him for the light-up rune, hurling a handful of bright light at the Kade. With an ear-splitting screech it incinerated into a breath of wind and ash, but not before Reynir could feel the claws of its gaze piercing into his eyeballs, and the whisper of its terrible multitude of voices in his head.

"i HaVe You. fIgHT me, ThEn." 

Its laughter followed Reynir into darkness. His last thought before the light vanished from his mind was, _Onni, I'm sorry._

* * *

Something silver flickered in the dark. The rhythmic chanting of two voices - one old, a woman, singing of grace and gratitude for her freedom. One young, male, tears in his song.

* * *

A swan and a great, white-shining falcon rose into the air followed by a flock of other birds, until they winked out against the sky. There was an owl there, too, remaining behind alone perched on a rock in the dark water of dreams.

* * *

"...me back to me. Please. I - grandma and I, we exorcized It. You weakened it enough for her to fight off its influence, and we set them free. You only have to wake up now."

His eyelids were heavy, too heavy to open, but his hand wasn't too heavy to lift. He knew the face he touched. It was alright now. It shouldn't be wet.

* * * 

When he woke, it was to a clear, bright night. 

A fire nearby was flickering, providing light and warmth, reflected on the glassy surface of a pond, painting the water lilies golden. Next to him, a warm body rested, grey hair falling over his face in exhausted sleep. 

He knew this place, the rock ledge beneath him. The name of its owner lay sweet on his tongue.

"Onni." 

A sleepy answer. "Reynir?" 

"... yeah. Yeah, it's me." 

* * *

They lay close to each other with no clothes between them and a single blanket bringing them closer. Reynir had spent himself under Onni's hands, and he could still taste Onni on his tongue, the salt and musk of him. He couldn't even really explain how it'd come so far, but he had given in to Onni's mingled joy and hurt easily, trying to kiss it better, and then forgetting the hurt altogether. 

All around them, the contours of Onni's Haven blurred into the waking world softly and slowly, and even though he didn't want to leave quite yet, Reynir gave himself over, confident that Onni would follow.

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to Kira for her beta. ♥


End file.
